Sunday, May 22, 2011

Al Qaeda In Iraq Had Official Help In Prison Escapes In Baghdad And Basra

On May 8, 2011 there was a prison revolt in Baghdad led by Al Qaeda in Iraq members. The attempted escape failed, but it’s since been revealed that the insurgents had help from members of the security forces. At the same time, there is a controversy brewing that members of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office assisted Al Qaeda operatives to successfully flee from a prison in Basra back in January. Both events show that the Islamists have agents working throughout Iraq’s government.

On May 7, there was an attempted prison break from a facility attached to Iraq’s Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. The prisoners started their revolt at 10 pm, and fought security forces for six and a half hours. Al Qaeda in Iraq’s governor of Baghdad Huthaifa al-Batawi, who was the mastermind of the October 2010 attack upon a Christian church in Baghdad that killed 68, was the leader. The detainees started their escape by attacking a guard that was taking them to the bathroom. They then went to the offices of General Mohammad Saleh, who was the counterterrorism chief of Baghdad’s Karrada district, and shot and killed him. They then waited and shot all the officers that came out to see what was going on. Three detainees seized a car, and tried to drive out of the prison, but were shot and killed. The prisoners eventually took over part of the facility, and fought off the guards and security forces until they were overwhelmed around 4:30 am. In the end, six guards, General Saleh and two other high ranking officers, along with Batawi and ten other Al Qaeda members were killed.

Originally, the press reported that the detainees had seized guns and grenades from the guards, but it was later revealed that Al Qaeda used sources within the security forces to smuggle them into the prison. Al Qaeda’s umbrella organization, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed on the internet that it snuck in guns, explosives, and tools into the facility weeks before the revolt. They were also able to deliver messages to Batawi, and work out plans for the escape. The Islamists wanted to free up to 200 of their followers, and probably planned to kill the general and others as well. A government investigation pointed to members of the Interior Ministry helping out Al Qaeda, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said as much in a talk with the media.

The Basra and Baghdad escapes are just one more example that militants have infiltrated every level of the Iraqi government. The police, intelligence agencies, Interior Ministry, and the prime minister’s office have all been implicated in these two incidents. They come on top of other earlier breakouts that involved the security forces, along with the current assassination campaign against public employees that obviously has official assistance. There could be all kinds of reasons behind this help. There might be insurgent spies within the bureaucracy or those sympathetic to the Islamists’ cause, while others may simply be taking bribes or giving into threats. Whatever the motivation, they point to the staying power and influence of the insurgency despite all their losses in recent years. It also highlights the frailty of the security apparatus and government, which has been unable to stamp out this infiltration.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News, and I have been interviewed by Rudaw English. I was interviewed on CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com